I started out before dawn for a quiet walk up the track behind the hut. Only a hundred metres on, I heard stepping sounds below me in the bush. Carefully, I crept closer, through a shallow gully and onto a clearing where I could see across the dark valley to good grassy slips. It began to be light enough to see dim colours. I reversed back up onto the track, and a deer ran away above me – wrong guess! My ears had played tricks and I’d stalked away from the deer instead of towards it.

Later I was back at the hut and about to boil up a nice brew and porridge with Tony and Don, but Tony bustled back in from the doorway: “Deer !” My rifle was still leaning up out on the verandah so I had a head start. Three deer were looking down at us from the tall slip across the river. Tony brought out the hut benches and mattresses for rests and we lay down in the fresh snow on the hut clearing to line up for a shot. I hoped the 45 degree slope would offset the longish and unknown range and aimed at the brisket of a hind, oh so clearly visible through the 7X… An hour and a half later I had completed an extensive zig zag search of a hundred metre section of the cold and scrubby face where the deer had trotted off and there was no sign of hair, blood or deer – just a few deep hoof marks and a small pocket of shattered rock. I climbed out and made my way up the bush spur to rejoin a track high above the valley. Further up, clumps of snow among the ferns provided a refreshing feast and right on the highest point I took out Tony’s GPS and got a fix. Somehow, I had brought a map which ended just short of this point but I remembered the lie of the land quite clearly from the one I had back at the hut.

A few hundred metres further along the ridge, I stepped off the track, ready to work across some rolling country then down into the next valley. Soon, a deer was thrashing around and snorting nearby but out of my sight in the muddy supplejack twined gully. I took a few more quiet steps and he departed for good, around the side.

I came out onto steep grassy clearings and the sun shone warmly on me at times. Across the valley, bedded out in the open, there was a red hind and a smaller very black deer with it which I later realised could have been a fallow. They were too far to shoot across to and were sitting in a chamois – like impregnable position with 360 degree views. I stalked across several steep scallops in the hillside but didn’t see any animals nearby and began to wonder whether it might be feasible to cross the river some distance upstream of them then quickly sidle in around the grass and rock ribs to get within shooting distance, alpine style. The two deer stood up and began feeding and I gradually worked my way down till I was level with them. I found myself with a good sitting position and a solid tree to rest my rifle stock against. I estimated the range at about 200 m and the larger deer would have been less than half the distance of the one I had missed in the morning.

I lined up on the deer and squeezed off a dry shot on an empty chamber. The cross hair jerked wildly and no doubt the animal would have walked free if that had been a live round. The second dry fire was fairly good and could well have connected. Third time, the crosshair sat well inside the chest right out to the follow through. OK. Onto a live round. The shot broke and the smaller deer dashed straight across a hundred metres of slip to disappear into the bush without looking back. Strange behaviour, I thought. I had assumed it was the fawn and would hang around when the hind fell. The larger deer, which I had shot at, tumbled with broken leg over a lip and down a steep gravel slide to lie inert in the scrub.

I loaded the boned out meat and hind legs into my pikau. The bag was heavy on my back and it was hard to move quickly down the steep sided valley, climbing down hand over hand to the riverbed and hopping over boulders towards a fork some distance downstream, where I had arranged to meet Tony. I expected he would have heard my shot and would be making his way upstream to meet me. I looked forward to handing over half the load for him to carry. Light rain began to sift down and the river became larger and more constricted so that I had to break off a long stick to help me cross, thigh deep, between the rocks.

Finally, the river plunged down between some house sized boulders then surged among others the size of cars out of sight around a bend. On each side and behind me, black rocky walls rose 50 m vertically ... I decided that Tony wouldn't be expecting me to come down and meet him now and that to get back to the hut I would have to climb out. Right out of the valley, in fact. On the ridge above the true left, where I had descended from, there was the big marked track which led right down to the hut.

I took one of the back legs out of my heavy pack and hung it near the stream, then retraced my steps to the bottom of a large grassy face. I took out my inhaler, had a couple of puffs and set to ascending the steep, wet face in the last of the faint daylight. At the top of the grass, I rested and put on my polarfleece swanny, PVC parka and headlamp, before venturing upwards into the bush.

Near the top of a bushy knob, I got a GPS fix, which put me about 700 m from the high point of the track. More or less any direction south or west would take me back onto the track ... My faith in the compass and GPS were sorely tested when they told me I should angle away from the higher ground and descend, apparently off the side of the hill. But I had no choice and I did know I had to move, somehow, across a saddle around here. I was just coming to the edge on the map I had. Sleety showers swept across the tall forest and everything was saturated and inky black.

My headlight alternately picked up trees in the distance which I could select by compass and navigate to, and then dazzled me with a mass of ferns centimetres from my eyes. I parted them in a swimming motion, crawled underneath them and then wavered and swayed pushing over them. I felt surprisingly clear headed despite my unsteadiness and my hands, although chilled stiff, didn't feel that cold when I stopped for a few moments. I wasn't sure if I was really going well or if I was in a hypothermic delerium. I had resolved to save the half moro bar remaining in my swanny pocket until I reached the track, but it played on my mind, growing and becoming more nourishing and tempting in my imagination.

It had been only 300 m to go, but now the GPS wouldn’t give another fix. The compass indicated that I should angle at 45 degrees across the face but I estimated that I was somewhere below the track, so could simply follow the slope straight uphill towards it regardless. After the usual interminable fern and understory bashing, I found myself on the track. I ate the half moro bar and my hands did indeed stay warm now that they were no longer pushing through new wet ferns. The pack was still a fair dead weight.

Descending a ridge always has the potential for navigational disaster. Thick mist limited my vision in the torchlight. Not having been over this part of the track before, I concentrated hard from marker to marker, mostly fairly sure the ground trail was still under my feet. After half an hour or so, there was the ffitt-TOCK of a rifle shot, not too far away below me in the valley. I quickly worked a round into the breech of the .303 and let one off to tell my mates I was OK and would be down soon.
- Chris